and yes, frequently, those hardships we disremember* correspond to cultural attitudes about what deserves outrage and what does not. who is worth a think-piece in the New York Times (“all the news that’s fit to print). who is worth 24-hour media coverage on cnn. who is worth reblogs & retweets & likes & favorites. it’s the little-white-girl-in-a-well-effect. we get this. we aint sleep.

media - tumblr included - is an arm of white supremacy & settler colonialism & anti-blackness & orientalism & anti-semitism & ableism & misogyny and will therefore report on stories in a way that reifies current power structures. no doubt.

we all have noted with WTF posts that mainstream media was late as fuck about Mike Brown. had twitter not lit a fire up under their asses, who would know his name? who would know his sweet face? his story?**

it’s not necessarily wrong to point out, Hm. This important issue isn’t getting traction. Get on it.

but.

frequently as fuck, when someone makes a nobody-cares-about-this post, they do so to compare (whether or not they’re conscious of this) said issue with another (lol, usually BLACK issue, surprise surprise) that is, for whatever reason in that moment, getting more media traction.

straight up, i’m not one of those folks who dismisses all discussions of differing marginal realities as “oppression olympics.” i think there is a time and a place to bring up these things. the time and place is usually Right Now.

but ppl do this without the proper context to understand why something may getting widespread social media (and frequently social media only) attention & something else might not.

everyone knows mike brown & trayvon martin.

maybe a few more know vonderitt meyers.

(and forgive my lack of discussion of black girls & women rn; too triggering at this moment to even think their names)

but like, that’s 3 black boys/men out of how the fuck many?

people can instinctively understand how mike brown became a juggernaut in our social justice activism even tho lordy fuck we could come up with a long ass list of other black people murdered as a result of the state-sanctioned 400 year long genocide in this country & worldwide, while many other names are forgotten or never known.

but then they can’t apply that logic to nothing else?

sometimes there’s a reason to draw attention to the ways some people are getting forgot, usually because they’re being purposefully silenced.

black trans women getting left out of Black Lives Matter comes to mind.

but some of these things are not like the other. there’s a difference between widespread institutional silencing & your shit just aint picked up yet, and ima need folks to learn to recognize which is which.

i mean, i reblogged dress meme posts while my baby was getting a fucking spinal tap cuz doctors are tryna figure out why xe can’t breathe; xe might fucking have meningitis — and you gonna try to tell me how what i put on my tumblr necessarily & always correlates to what i care about? what’s most present in my mind?

i won’t go into the anti-blackness inherent in a lot of those guilt-tripping posts. anybody who tries to frame black hypervisibility as anything but another tool to remind the world we are not human…well, i’m just gonna remind y’all there are videos of tamir rice & eric garner & oscar grant.

a reminder: Black Tumblr is huge as fuck. That is not a problem. That we have a outlet for our traumas, that is not a problem, and that our issues have one social network where they can gain traction, that is not a problem.

** tho i will also point out: what did ferguson’s eventual meme like ascent into our cultural consciousness do for mike brown? he’s still dead. countless black ppl continue to be murdered by the state. no one will be held accountable. our hypervisibility as a ppl has never helped us.

So just how much Native ate you? You identify as Metis, so that makes you about 1/2 Caucasian. Do you even qualify for status? I am also assuming you do not consider our father in this equation of "aboriginality" I often find it amazing how people will go through all these mental gymnastics to try and rid themselves of all whiteness as if being of European (Caucasian) decent is automatically a bad thing!

It takes a lot to make my bypass my default mode of polite-and-assuming-the-best-of-people, anon, so that makes you special. Congratulations. Now sit down while I learn you some things. I’ll keep it point form for you.

In Canada, the Métis people are recognized as a distinct aboriginal people group in Canada.

Métis does not mean “part native”. Some people do use lowercase-m “metis” or “métis” to indicate being part settler/white/European and part Indigenous. This is particularly common in Ontario and Quebec. See the link at the end of this post to read more about pan-Métisism

But note the capital M when I talk about myself? See the bright red sash in my latest video? That’s ‘cause I’m Métis, with a capital M, as in—

The Métis people are a distinct people group.

We have our own language (Michif) with regional/geographic distinctions. Both historically and today we have our own distinct spiritual beliefs and religious practices. We have distinct traditional music, food, hunting practices, social events, ceremonies, holy days, and community beliefs and values.

We are a unique, distinct people group with a strong cultural identity and pride in our historical, traditional, and daily culture, lifestyle, and beliefs.

So now don’t you look silly? This is why we should not assume.

"You identify as Metis, so that makes you about 1/2 Caucasian." Ha, no. That’s not how it works. See the other link at the end of this post to read more about that. In the meantime, let me learn you some more things.

Canada wanted to know how to define Métis people too, and to everyone’s surprise they didn’t just assume out of ignorance like yourself. They did the right thing and actually asked the Métis community.

What the Canadian government/Métis community came up with a three facet method of identification in 2003 (see R v. Powley)

In Canada, to be recognized as the government as Métis and to receive a Métis status card (which is a little different but very similar to the more well-known “indian status” card) you need to fit three criteria:

You need to personally identify as Métis (check)

You need to be accepted by a Métis community (check)

You need to have verifiable ancestral connection to a historic Métis community (check)

Oh look, I’m Métis!

That last point is the tenacious “blood quantum” thing you mentioned. And isn’t blood quantum a tricky thing? The great Métis leader, revolutionary, and poet Louis Riel said,

"It is true that our Native roots are humble, but it is right for us to honour our mothers as well as our fathers. Why should we concern ourselves with the extent of our European blood or our Indian blood? If we have any sense of appreciation or filial devotion to our parents, are we not obliged to say, "We are Métis."? (translated)

Louis Riel argued that identity isn’t boiled down to race, or blood quantum. I agree. It’s about culture and identity, and it’s the same for métis people too.

A Métis person who is half native and a Métis person who can’t even be sure of blood quantum because of generations of intermarrying between Métis people are equally as Métis, so long as that is how they identify and live.

And not that it matters (because it doesn’t), but my maternal grandfather was Nehiyaw (Cree) and Métis. My maternal grandmother is ancestrally Métis, but does not identify that way. My paternal grandparents were Doukhobor. My mom is Métis. I am Métis. Period.

Shame on you for trying to invalidate my identity.

Shame on you for pulling the reverse racism, “it’s okay to be white!!~”, “it’s not bad to be of european descent” uwu” nonsense. As if I didn’t know that.

As if being Métis isn’t having as much pride in the parts of our culture that was handed down to us by our first European fathers as the parts of our culture that came from our Indigenous mothers.

And shame on you for thinking you can correct or educate a Métis person about themselves when you don’t even know who the Métis people are.

If you would have asked politely, coming from a place of at least a little humility, I would have been happy to link you some things to read and left it at that. But no. You had to be absolutely ridiculous and now here we are.

I hope you’ve learned something, anon. For me, this kind of ignorance is nothing I haven’t heard before.

Palestinian Knesset member Haneen Zoabi and her media adviser and acting Joint Arab List spokesperson Emilie Moatti were attacked by rightists Tuesday during a panel at the Ramat Gan College of Law and Business. The attackers were identified with extreme right-wing settler Baruch Marzel, who is running with Eli Yishai’s Yachad party.

The assailants violently interrupted the panel Zoabi was speaking on, before physically getting on the stage and pouring cola on her head. Moatti was reportedly hit in the head with a flagpole outside the building while Zoabi’s staff members attempted to evacuate the MK. Moatti was taken to the emergency room at Ichilov and reportedly suffered a light concussion.

having flashbacks to a class last week when i literally said the words “kill whitey” when talking about european settler colonialism with a classmate making a claim for french sovereignty / the french being colonized in kkkanada. i then proceeded to laugh for like, 10 seconds straight because i’m hilarious / awesome and they were so clearly pissed.

Many people misunderstand the nature of the struggle for Palestine. They consider Palestine to be contested land between Israelis and Palestinians. The facts about the struggle are simple: 1. There was no entity called Israel before 1948 2. There was no Israelis before 1948 3. There is no meaningful verifiable connection between modern Israeli and the Israelites of the Bible. Modern Israelis are not Semitic and came to Judaism through conversions.Also, the Hebrew Bible, the only source of the mythology about Israel and the Israelites, is unreliable. 4. European colonial settlers transported mainly from Europe settled and colonized historic Palestine by force and without the consent of the indigenous population, the Palestinians. 5. The settler colonists established Israel in Palestine in 1948 by Jews of Jews for Jews with the active support of western colonial powers after ethnically cleansing the majority of the Palestinians, destroying more than 530 Palestinian towns and city sections, and committing scores of heinous crimes against Palestinian civilians to bring about their expulsion. 6. Since 1948 Israel created an elaborate apartheid system that favors Jews, discriminates against the Palestinians, and is designed to maintain control and dominance of Israeli Jews over Palestinians by using genocidal methods and preventing their return, equality and normal living conditions. Palestine is not a contested territory. Palestine has its rightful owners, the Palestinians.Palestine is settled, colonized, and occupied by a foreign population..!

Photo by @edkashi Refugees gather amidst the ruins of a primary school which had been converted into a shelter in the village of Fadan Attaker, Nigeria on April 3, 2013. Five days earlier the Christian villages of Zilan and Mafan came under attack and left more than 30 dead. The attackers were believed to be Muslim Fulani, and this violence represents the ongoing ethno-religious struggles between the settlers and indigenes in this region of Northern Nigeria.
Ed Kashi of @viiphoto is taking over the @thephotographersgallery Instagram feed for one week to coincide with the exhibition #humanrightshumanwrongs. This image is from a body of work that illuminates #humanrights issues that fuel the fire of Northern Nigeria’s turbulent state. by natgeo

“The women were lounging about the houses, some cleaning fish, others pounding rice; but they do not care for work, and the little money which they need for buying cloes they can make by selling mats or jungle fruits.”

—

some English lady who spent 5 weeks in Malaya in 1879 that Syed Hussein Alatas quotes in The Myth of the Lazy Native. The joke practically writes itself, but Alatas says it for us: “We may ask the author what is meant by work here? Is cleaning fish and pounding rice not work? Work here means wage earning outside the home. Are making mats and selling fruits not work? It is clear that work here means that activitiy introduced by colonial capitalism. If the ladies became coolies or servants of British planters or firm officials, she would then have considered them as working.”

So when the settler colonials say Indigenous people are lazy, they really mean “they won’t work for us to help us engineer their economy for our benefit”.

A list of all massacres of Indigenous Australians that happened in Victoria. I feel this information needs to be shared as people don’t know nearly enough about Indigenous Australians and do not know how horribly we were and still are treated. Nothing else needs to be said as the list tells it all. Click the photos to save a bigger image for reading the list clearly.

“The Palestine movement is NOT AN ANTI-JEWISH MOVEMENT. To conflate anti-Zionism with anti-Jewish sentiment is to buy into the Zionist conflation of “Israel” with “Jewish.” That in and of itself is anti-Jewish: not all Jewish people are Israeli, not all Jewish people believe in Israeli colonization, and there were Jewish people before the state of Israel was founded and there will still be Jewish people after apartheid is smashed.”